This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

  • More IVAW questionable blather

    A reader sent me an article from OpEdNews (Google it) with an account from Matthis Chiroux of his arrest at Hofstra University last week at the presidential debates. There was one paragraph I found exceptionally deceptive;

    One officer, when I brought up the prospect of speaking to a lawyer,threatened to put me in the back of the jail, where, the big boys will pop your cherry! When I asked this officer if he had just threatened an honorably discharged veteran of Afghanistan with prison rape and told him I wanted his name and rank, he refused and told me to look it up on the police report which the Nassau County Police Department has refused to provide us a copy of.

    Actually, it was one part of one sentence when he referred to himself as “an honorably discharged veteran of Afghanistan”. First of all, if he did indeed refused to honor his IRR recall, went AWOL and missed movement to Iraq, he hasn’t been honorably discharged. He hasn’t been discharged at all. Unless it’s ALL a lie. Like I said the other day, if the Nassau police recognized him as a deserter, they would have turned him over to the Army. I’m wondering if he was ever recalled – either way he’s lying.

    He’s also not a veteran of Afghanistan. Witness this photo of Chiroux taken the other night at the protest;

    Notice on Goldsmith’s right sleeve (Goldsmith is on the reader’s left), near his wrist, he has two bars. Each one of those bars represent six months service in a combat zone. Now notice Chiroux’s sleeve. Nothing.

    I blew up the picture of his ribbons, too;

    No campaign ribbons. He may have spent a few days in a combat zone, but he wasn’t stationed there. He was a straphanger. A pogue. A glory hound. A staff puke punching up his resume`.

    A color picture;

    And I figure any ‘bubba’ in jail that night would’ve been disappointed to learn Chiroux lost his ‘cherry’ long before last week by the looks of him.

    Chiroux continued;

    After my arrest, the police charged their horses onto a sidewalk and unprovokedly knocked my friend Nick Morgan, a veteran of Iraq, to the ground and trampled his face. They then arrested him, put a piece of gauze on his facewound and loaded him onto a bus headed for jail with the rest of the Hempstead 15.

    Isn’t that cute…they have a name for their little group reminiscient of the 60s. How would Chiroux know what happened to the little group of children after he was arrested? Is he going by the stories of his fellow alleged hate-mongers? Like those guys on “Cops” that cry out “I didn’t do nuthin’”.

    There’s a more hillarious account at Micheal Moore’s website (you’ll have to Google it, because I don’t link to fat boy’s website, either). Chiroux tried to accost the same arresting police officers at a diner near the station and got yelled at. While he wimpered and wiped snot from his upper lip, the police threatened to arrest him again. Which made him whimper even more. Too bad there are pictures of his swollen eyes and quivering lips.

    You’d think they were recounting their time in Abu Gahrab or something.

    The three who planned on getting arrested, Chiroux, Kokesh and Goldsmith complained that their injured compadre Nick Morgan wasn’t getting medical attention and looked as if he was suffering a concussion. I submit that Morgan wasn’t wired too tight before he got trampled by a horse. In his profile at IVAW, he demonstrates how the Maryland public education system failed him;

    I was deployed when I was 19 and didn’t return home until several months after I turned 21. I was overseas for a year and a week, most of my time was spent in Baghdad (BIAP).

    (Emphasis mine) Must’ve been 21 in dog years.

    I guess they all figure this is going to be their last chance to get any publicity since the war is winding down and they’ve got nothing to complain about. Well, with any luck, McCain will win the election and they’ll have plenty of opportunity to make asses of themselves for four more years.

    TSO: For the record, I am ashamed that my co-blogger Jonn woulod attack Matthis’ heroic 6 day tour of duty in Afghanistan. Just imagine the horrors he must have faced on Baghram Airfield. Between the $15 hour massages from Kyrgystani girls, and the dangerous trips down route Disney to the Baskin Robbins, I think what Matthis did really brings honor on himself and all those he hangs with. I mean, if 6 days on a walled compund with 10,000 troops doesn’t qualify as a tour of duty in A-stan, I don’t know what does. More on this story at my other stomping grounds.

  • New fantasy book available on Amazon.com

    I’ve always been more partial to George RR Martin and David Gemmell, but it seems there is a new fantasy writer on the scene and he’s coming loaded for bear.

    It’s about a bunch of disgruntled dwarves who join a military unit and go off to fight, but they see things other don’t see. So, they are fighting an actual enemy, and also a supernatural one that no one else around them can see. I haven’t read it yet, but from the excerpts, it just doesn’t sound all the realistic, even for a fantasy novel. For instance:

    “I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

    Now, why the character didn’t just use a sidearm to down this threat, or tell her to stop before using the grenade machine gun to obliterate her isn’t entirely clear. It reads like a Schwarzenegger film where everyone is running pell mell around and the good guys never get hit. I mean, really, when you hit a lady and a bag of groceries with numerous 40mm rounds, I don’t know that you could identify the contents of the bag all that well.

    Here’s another passage:

    “One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation…One of the snipers replied back, ‘Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ The lieutenant colonel responded, ‘You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.’ After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.”

    See what I mean? He’s sacrificed believability for a good yarn.

    I hope it ends with Charlie the Unicorn making it to Gum Drop Mountain.

  • We know what they think of veterans now

    Well, if we didn’t know before, we know now what the Democrats think of veterans. From Cuffy Meigs we see how Obama is willing to make fun of John McCain because of the injuries he suffered after ejecting from his aircraft after being shot down (hint: think about that for a second. You’re cruising along a the speed of sound and suddenly stop and fall a few thousand feet…it’s not the cakewalk it looks like on TV) and beaten by his captors and refused medical attention for a couple of years. Now he can’t manipulate his fingers to type…har-di-har-har.

    Wesley Clark said back in June that McCain‘s time as a prisoner doesn’t give any special insight to being president. Maybe John McCain’s time as a prisoner didn’t make him presidential material, but the training he got at Annapolis and the years after his capture as a military officer give him a leg up on a “community organizer” as far as leadership and decision-making…well, to every one except a community organizer.

    And did I mention that Track Palin was arrested in a vandalism ring a few years ago and part of his plea deal was to go in the Alaska National Guard? Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence. Everyone knows that the military is just jam-packed with criminals.

    And idiots. John Kerry said so

    I remember when Bill Clinton was trying to balance the budget, one of the first things he did was start a program for veterans to pay for their health care (called TriCare) – this was after the Democrat Congress doubled the copay for everyone (including recruiters and ROTC instructors who were stationed away from military healthcare facilities). Then Bill Clinton kicked veterans 65 and over off of TriCare and put them on Medicare to save more money (George Bush gave it back, by the way).

    But, hey, the Democrats accepted a letter from the IVAW, so I guess we can trust them to take care of vets now, right?

    UPDATED: Parody video from Scrappleface (h/t Bloodthirsty Liberal‘s Aunt Agatha)

    [youtube DR0k_-IFqJk nolink]

  • IVAW’s Kokesh withdraws Barr endorsement

    For those of you still following the antics of IVAW, you probably remember that Adam Fallujah Kokesh, the IVAW’s resident lunatic, famously announced he’d be supporting Bob Barr now that Ron Paul was pulling out of the Republican primary contest. I knew when Kokesh announced he was supporting Ron Paul he was just trying to help divide the Republican Party, and his support for Barr was just an extension of that little ploy.

    Well, a reader sent me a link to a Reason report today that Kokesh finally withdrew from Barr’s contest. The background for the report is a Barr press conference following a Ron Paul press conference down the hall;

    Kokesh raised his hand and started talking; Barr campaign chairman Russ Verney asked him to identify his media organization. “I’m an independent blogger,” Kokesh said. Verney and Kokesh talked over each other for about 30 seconds, Verney trying to move on, Kokesh explaining what had made him so angry. “Leadership is not just about knowing when to lead, but knowing when to follow,” Kokesh said. “You failed that test today and I retract my endorsement of you.”

    What an arrogant little toad. I guess he’s taking his ten IVAW voters and leaving. But at least the charade has ended.

    He can go all in for the “O” now…especially since some guy in Denver who said he was with the Obama campaign took their letter of demands (to end the war in Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqis) and promised Obama would read it. But McCain didn’t bother to give the IVAW players that satisfaction…another reason to support McCain.

    Kokesh can thank his VFP/VVAW buddies for the McCain snub. Why would a Vietnam vet want to give a moment of time to anyone associated with that crowd of pussies.

  • Code Pink on defense

    Apparently, Code Pink is suffering some popular backlash because of their antics recently. One of them wrote an especially loooonnnngggg post in their blog this morning (at 4:35 AM….jeez maybe their problem is a lack of beauty rest) entitled “To The Haters…” in which they disparage us for pointing out they’re ugly, shrieking harpies;

    You like to say that we’re “ugly” and we’re “scum.” You like to disparage our intelligence and patriotism. Sometimes you make threats: “If I see you agian I’ll stop you,” and “If I see you bitches I will do something horrible to you.” More than one of you suggested we should be “hanged.”

    Nice.

    (Just who are supposed to be the “ugly” ones here?)

    Take a good sober look over some of your recent posts… Most of them are about wounding, involving crude sexual references, misogyny, bigotry, and hate… there’s hardly an American sentiment in the bunch.

    Do you really want to sound like some hick counterpart to the Taliban, with your hatred of women, intolerance of views with which you disagree, and your threats of violence?

    Do ANY of you consider yourselves Christians, I wonder? How so… by what definition? (Ku Klux Kristians? That variety?)

    Sweet. Tell people to stop calling them names while calling their detractors names. Here’s a few reasons I call them ugly;
    DSC_0034
    DSC_0081
    DSC_0012
    DSC_0081

    I have more pictures, but I think you get the idea. I call them ugly because…well…they’re ugly.

    They go on and explain why they’re “flamboyant”;

    Because we’re flamboyant and because we refuse to be silenced, we sometimes get results.

    And those results are? Fundraising? Inflated egos? The war is still going on…you’ve accomplished nothing except proven yourselves buffoons and tools of your communist masters.

    Oh, and their analysis of the “surge” shows how keenly they grasp the whole concept;

    You poor schmucks actually believe that the troop Surge is behind the drop in violence in 2008 Iraq!

    But here’s the straight dope, regarding the Surge: There’s no question that the ethno-sectarian cleansing and walling up of Baghdad helped somewhat (the very bloody first phase of the Surge), but the real key to the drop in violence, per most American military officers on the ground, was putting 100,000 members of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) on the U.S. payroll — giving them each $300/month, arms, and U.S. training to chill out for a while…

    Notice she didn’t say that we pay the Iraqi Army or the Iraqi police, she says we pay the INSURGENTS, that we pay AL QAEDA. But they add the proviso;

    It’s no reflection on our brave troops, but rather a poor reflection on our dismal politicians….

    Yuh-huh. Those brave troops they refer to are the folks who are coming back and telling us how the surge has worked. Those brave troops are the folks who bear the brunt of your ill-reasoned criticism. I guess we should get some pleasure that they’ve admitted that there is indeed a drop in violence in Iraq…small pleasure.

    Well, if Code Pink is really nonpartisan, and they only want to stop the war with their “flamboyance” (a term I usually reserve for the gender-confused), why didn’t they interupt Barack Obama’s speech to the DNC? He’s admitted that he’ll continue the current administration’s policy in the war against terror. Why didn’t they interupt Joe Biden’s speech? He voted for the use of force in Iraq and had been advocating for dethroning Hussein for more than half-a-decade before the latest war in Iraq.

    Since we know that Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink. is a top bundler of contributions for Obama (on the same level as Hollywood moguls), we all know how non-partisan Code Pink really is, don’t we?

    The same goes for Code Pink’s beard, Adam Kokesh – our future Democrat Presidential candidate in the mold of John Kerry. I know the excuse of IVAW for not interrupting Obama’s speech will be that he accepted their list of demands…in reality, SOME GUY who said he was from the Obama campaign took thier letter, while no one in the McCain campaign was willing to pretend to take their list of demands. Yeah, big difference you wantwit dorks.

    Thanks for playing our game.

  • The aftermath of the RNC

    The poor protesters. Imagine. They gave it their all and they were virtually ignored at the Republican National Convention. Protesters weren’t beaten by the police or biten by police dogs for the cameras. So the next best thing they can do is complain that their First Amendment rights were violated. What more legitimate organization make this charge than the Socialist Worker, the reigning queens of hyperbole?

    THERE WAS a criminal conspiracy engulfing Minnesota’s Twin Cities during the Republican National Convention (RNC)–but it didn’t involve masked anarchists, as mainstream media outlets warned.

    The real conspiracy was a plot by 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to repress dissent and protests under the rubric of “national security” and the “war on terror.”

    The repression caught in its wake antiwar protesters, environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, socialists and reporters–in short, anyone who might show (or report on) signs of dissent against a government waging two barbaric wars while it can’t even provide health care to its own people.

    Got that? A criminal conspiracy. How much more dramatic can it get? How dare the government wage wars against our enemies who would like every last one of us dead. How dare the government not tax the living crap out of it’s citizens to pay for the healthcare of people too lazy to pay for their own.

    How do you crank up the venom from that point? Well, you can get a quote from an anonymous Iraq War vet to support your hyperbole;

    According to the Wall Street Journal, police responded to protests with “pepper spray, tear gas, smoke canisters and what they call ‘distraction devices’ that give a loud bang and a flash of light…” A member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who witnessed some of the violent police attacks told reporters that police were “treating [U.S.] civilians like you would Iraqis.”

    Of course, US troops don’t treat Iraqis like that…Iraqis generally comply with authority when it’s in their best interests.

    Now, I watched videos of some of the confrontations between police and “peace activists”, and from what i could see, the activists got off easy. I saw police who used only their bicycles to defend themselves from assaulting “peace activists”. The “activists”  would’ve been shot dead for those assaults in most every other country in the world.

    The “activists” should count their lucky stars…if the police hadn’t been there and private citizens were left to defend their own property and families, the “peace” movement would be burying countless of their friends today. The police protected them…you’d think they’d be grateful, wouldn’t you?

    Someone asked yesterday if that had been Kokesh at the McCain speech. Yes it was;

    [youtube OmntuKvlytY nolink]

  • Shiftless hippies unimpressed by IVAW

    Photo from People’s Press Collective

    Readers may remember back in March the IVAW put out a call to ANSWER, World Can’t Wait, Code Pink, et al. to hold off their protests on the March 15th anniversary of the Iraq War so that the IVAW/VVAW/VFP/SEIU could conduct their Winter Soldier II theater at Silver Spring, MD without competing for the attention of the media. WSII fizzled and got virtually no attention from the media (despite a large presence of media) and a result, the protest against the war which happened five days later, on a Wednesday, drew less than a thousand protesters and, in turn, fizzled out, too. Many of the non-IVAW protest organizations blamed the IVAW for their piss poor performance.

    Well, that bit of history seems to be repeating itself. According to one of the shiftless hippies caught in the theater of the IVAW yesterday;

    It was at this point I started to wonder that we’re doing as well in Iraq as we are.  If these tactical geniuses are any indication of the military resources we have at our disposal, it’s a wonder every one of them hasn’t been slaughtered.

    Anyway, back at Larimer and Speer, the I.V.A.W. negotiated some more (with someone), declared that the delegates had heard their message (somehow), and disbanded.

    […]

    The problem is that the I.V.A.W. assholes had put a call out to the more militant protesters, claiming that they were gonna end the march by breaking through police lines and doing their damndest to confront the delegates face to face.   As such, they had a few hundred folks in the march who were ready and willing to put their bodies on the line for the assholes, and ended up wasting the entire day being herded around by police and ordered about by Medea Benjamin types.

    I guess, I’d  point out to this shiftless hippie that these are largely the military’s rejects. Their tendancy to lie and their inability to lead is generally a result of living among the American population, not a result of their training.

    I’d also pass along a warning to the Minnesota law enforcement – since Kokesh and Millard are there getting ready for next week’s protests, I’ll be betting they’re going to try and bulid their reputations up a bit. This may be their last chance. Kokesh has been willing to get arrested on countless occasions in the last year and he has yet to pay a price…he keeps testing his boundaries and since this war is winding down, he’s losing his cachet. I’d expect a grand last gasp gesture next week.

  • IVAW, police face-off

    Photo from Reuters

    While the Democrats were enjoying their convention last night, IVAW was leading an estimated crowd of 3500 protesters (varying sources put the number at 5000 and 7000, so you tell me) and demanded they be given time at the DNC podium to read Barack Obama their three aims. Those aims being;

    Removing U.S. troops from Iraq immediately, providing full health care benefits to returning veterans, and paying reparations to Iraqis for the damage done during the war.

    According to the Denver Post, there was a “tense stand off” between police and the veterans;

    The veterans were arrayed in formation and in uniform, marching slowly toward a line of police, who had warned them they could be pepper sprayed and arrested. They were being watched by a crowd estimated by police at more than 5,000, many of whom had marched with the veterans from the Denver Coliseum.

    As the vets got within a few yards of the police, the cavalry arrived in the form of two white-shirted Obama staffers who asked a representative of the veterans to be escorted inside the security zone.

    After a brief conversation, a veteran’s representative said they had been promised a meeting with Obama’s liason for veteran’s affairs. A cheer went up, the veterans did an about face, and the Democrats appear to have avoided providing John McCain with some very unflattering video footage of veteran’s being pepper-sprayed hogtied and handcuffed outside their convention.

    Another story, however shows up on the Indypendent;

    The march was met with a line of more than 100 Denver Police Department officers clad in riot gear and armed with batons and pepper ball guns at the intersection of Market and 17th Streets. The police refused to let IVAW or the thousands of antiwar demonstrators closer to the convention. After long moments of contention between the demonstration and the police, finally one IVAW representative, former U.S. Marine Liam Madden, was allowed to cross police lines to meet with representatives of the Obama campaign.

    As Madden left on his mission, it seemed as if more than 50 IVAW members were prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and likely arrest. Less than 10 minutes later, at approximately 7:40pm (CT), an announcement was made by IVAW to the crowd, indicating that Obama had endorsed their three points of unity, causing the crowd to uproar in applause.

    Some veterans were visibly emotional by the end of the march. In a highly stirring and symbolic moment, members of IVAW gave a peace salute towards the direction of the Pepsi Center. There was then a moment of silence for casualties of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “Sen. Obama, we won’t forget this,” said Jeff Engelhart, IVAW member who served in Baquba, Iraq, with the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division, to the crowd via microphone and loud speakers. He went on to indicate that if Sen. Obama did not make good on his endorsement, more antiwar protests would come.

    Well, there’s no confirmation that Obama endorsed their three points, in fact his website hasn’t changed one word of his plan for Iraq. The Rocky Mountain News confirms the Denver Post story that all the veterans got was a meeting, no endorsement of their three points;

    Iraq War veterans who led a march through the streets of Denver won a meeting with a liaIson from Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.

    The news ended a tense standoff between the veterans and riot police near and entrance to the convention, and brought tears to the eyes of several vets.

    So, the Leftist independent media either got it wrong, or they intentionally lied. If they honestly think that Obama will ever agree to reparations to Iraq or immediate withdrawal from Iraq, they’re seriously deluded. I wonder if John Solz is taking notes on the people in the picture above and getting ready to dress them down for expressing political views while wearing a uniform.

    I have yet to see the big guns of the IVAW in Denver, yet. Apparently, they’re in Minnesota for the Republican convention.